Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 03

Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 03

Aunt Maeve was waiting on the platform in a coat two sizes too big, holding a thermos of hot chocolate like it was a weapon.

She was my mother’s younger sister. The black sheep. The Hale woman who’d refused to marry into any pack and instead opened a bakery in Hollow Creek, Connecticut, a sleepy little town with one strange rule every wolf knew by heart.

Hollow Creek belonged to vampires.

No wolf crossed that line without an invitation. Not even an Alpha.

When my mother died, Maeve had begged me to come live with her. But I was already engaged.

“Kieran will take care of me,” I told her.

She hadn’t argued. She’d just looked at me like she was watching a storm come in.

Now here I was. Twenty-five years old. Barefoot in a designer gown, carrying everything that mattered in a tiny clutch and my womb.

Maeve didn’t ask questions. She drove me to her apartment above the bakery, sat me at the kitchen table, and set down hot chocolate and a plate of leftover cannoli.

“Eat first. Cry later.”

I ate. For the first time in months, food tasted like something other than duty.

Then I told her everything. The loneliness. Selene. The ball. The papers. The words I’d spoken in that study.

Her face went from worry to something close to murder.

“You rejected an Alpha,” she said slowly. “First.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She set down her mug hard. “That man never deserved you. And if one of his mutts shows up at my door, I’ve got a shotgun loaded with silver and I know exactly how to use it.”

I almost smiled.

Then her eyes dropped. Narrowed. Maeve had a little witch blood in her, like all the Hale women, and the charm on her wrist had started to glow a soft, warm gold.

“Elara. That charm only glows for one thing.”

I froze.

“How far along?”

I hadn’t told a soul. I’d found out two days before the ball, locked in a pharmacy bathroom, shaking, staring at two pink lines. That night I’d heard it for the first time with my wolf’s ears. A second heartbeat. Tiny. Fierce.

“Six weeks,” I whispered.

Maeve closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet.

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“He drafted my rejection before our anniversary. He was going to replace me with her. This baby changes nothing for him.”

“And for you?”

I pressed both hands to my stomach.

“Everything.”

She gripped my hands.

“Then you stay here. You rest, you heal, you grow this baby. We figure out the rest together.” Her voice cracked. “Your mother made me promise to protect you. I failed her for three years. I won’t fail again.”

That night I lay in the little bedroom above the bakery, listening to the radiator hum and the smell of bread dough drifting up from downstairs.

For the first time in three years, silence felt like peace instead of punishment.

No waiting for footsteps. No rehearsed smiles.

Then my phone lit up.

Kieran. Twenty-three missed calls.

And one text:

“Why is your side of the closet empty? Why are the papers sealed? Why do I reach for you through the bond and feel NOTHING? Where are you, Elara? ANSWER ME.”

He noticed my clothes before he noticed me.

I blocked his number and turned off the phone.

I was almost asleep when I heard it.

Far away. At the edge of town, where the pine forest met the vampire border.

A howl.

Long. Raw. Furious.

Every hair on my arms stood up, because I would know that voice anywhere.

Kieran had found me.